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by blihp 2029 days ago
Definitely... that's part of the reason I chime in when this topic comes up. Having done both Linux and mobile development, I don't believe that the entirety of the answer is going to be 'just throw a more powerful SoC in the device'. Sure, that will help to a degree in some areas but there is a lot of work that has been put into iOS and Android to achieve a balance between battery life and performance that most developers who have only worked in/on Linux haven't appreciated. Which is understandable since it wasn't 'their' problem... now with the Pinephone/Librem 5, it is.

Something I have found worthwhile has been listening to the UBports podcast over the last 6 months or so. They really do seem to be 'getting it' faster than most re: what's left to be done. That's partly because they're in the rather unique position of coming from a place of having the Android kernel (which isn't just a vanilla Linux kernel) do a lot of things for them (i.e. UBports on Android phones) and now that they're running on bare metal (i.e. UBports on Pinephone) with (mostly) the same code base they are able to see 'oh, yeah... the kernel and/or apps need to be able to do Y' in order to replicate the functionality they get on Android phones.
1 comments
Mediterraneo10 2029 days ago
UBports relies on 2014-era Ubuntu-specific software that even Ubuntu moved away from. Consequently, I expect a lot of UBports to bit-rot before its maintainers can make it a reliable and competitive option. Mobian's stack isn't what I would have liked (it is a lot of unoptimized GNOME libs), but at least it seems to have enough corporate backing for development to keep going.
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blihp 2029 days ago
Yeah, both projects have their challenges. It's been good to see them, as well as the Librem developers, working with each other to advance their respective projects where it makes sense.

Just curious, what corporate backing are you referring to? I hadn't heard that before.

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Mediterraneo10 2029 days ago
Historically so much of the GNOME tech stack which Mobian is based on, has been developed by Red Hat employees.
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